offering to pick me up.”
Irene was startled at how quickly the woman’s face softened from twisted with rage to great beauty. It happened so fast that Irene wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.
This woman seemed slightly shorter than Irene. She had thick blond hair, cut slightly above her shoulders. In the light from the garage, Irene could see that she was deeply tanned. Since it was just the middle of February, Irene wondered if she had a private tanning bed.
“You know I can never pick you up on a Tuesday. My job ends at five, and my aerobics class starts at six- thirty. Why didn’t you just drive the Mazda home?”
Her voice was now pleasant but still had a slightly hard, metallic undertone. Irene wondered if she was hearing things. Perhaps she was just projecting her feelings onto a younger and more beautiful woman.
Lowander sighed. “I walked to work yesterday morning.” He heaved his weary body out of the car and walked through the open garage door. Irene heard a door open and close. She got out of her Volvo and reached out to shake hands.
“My name is Inspector Irene Huss.”
The woman’s hand was cool and her handshake surprisingly strong. “Carina Lowander.”
“Did you hear about what happened at the hospital?”
“Yes, Sverker called me from work this morning. But there was no time to talk.”
Carina Lowander looked at her wristwatch, cupped glass with a metallic blue face. She was making an obvious point. “Excuse me, but my class begins in fifteen minutes. And I’m the trainer,” she said with a smile.
She turned in her high heels and adjusted her fur coat before sliding gracefully into the BMW. The only thing Irene could do was get into her own car. She knew she didn’t have the same air, not with her scuffed boots, worn leather coat, and rusty Volvo. And a head covered in bandages. No competition with fur coats and tanned skin.
IRENE’S FAMILY HAD plenty of comments to make when she got home.
“What did you do to yourself?” her daughter Katarina exclaimed.
“Just because you were at a hospital, that doesn’t mean you had to go under the knife,” said Krister.
One of Krister’s jokes! Irene was in no mood, and she answered shortly, “Never get a cat.”
Their dog, Sammie, rushed up and reassured Irene of his undying devotion. As she reached down to pet his soft, wheat-colored fur, he sniffed at the bandages on her face. Dinner was late this evening, since both Irene and Krister had been working, Katarina had jujitsu after school, and Jenny had been at guitar lessons until six-thirty. It felt cozy having everyone together for once, a rarity. Irene twirled a strand of spaghetti on her fork. She’d had to choose her words carefully, explaining the day’s events to her family. She noticed that Jenny hadn’t taken any of the meat sauce for the spaghetti. Since the serving dish was next to Irene’s elbow, she passed the sauce to Jenny. Her daughter stared at the brownish red sauce with its delicious tomato aroma and shook her head.
“I’ve given up meat,” she said.
“You’re giving up meat? Why?” Irene asked.
“I am not going to eat dead animals. They have the same right to life as we do. Farming animals is pure and simple torture.”
“And so that’s why you haven’t been drinking milk lately?”
“That’s right.”
“But milk is not meat.”
“A cow’s milk is for her calf, not for humans.”
Krister’s voice shook as he exclaimed, “What kind of idiocy is this? Have you turned into one of those crazy vegetarians?”
Jenny looked him straight in the eye. “Yes.”
Silence fell over the dinner table. Katarina broke it by complaining, “She says I shouldn’t wear my new boots.”
“They’re leather! There are boots made with fabric that are warmer and better.”
“And this morning she said I shouldn’t put honey in my tea.”
“No, you shouldn’t. The honey belongs to the bees.”
The two girls stared at each other furiously. Krister’s face had darkened. He had trained as a chef and was a master of a number of foreign cuisines. In a deceptively soft voice, he asked, “So what do you intend to eat?”
“There’s lots of good food that doesn’t come from murdered and oppressed animals. Potatoes, carrots, fruit and berries, nuts and peas—and there’s even fat made from vegetables.”
Jenny spoke by rote, as if she’d memorized a list of acceptable foods. She probably had. Where did all this come from?
The family dinner had taken an alarming turn. Krister was a peaceful and pleasant person, but his great passion in life, both professionally and personally, was food. His love showed in his growing girth. Could this be considered an occupational hazard? Irene thought tenderly, He’ll be fifty in a few years. He should probably start watching his weight. She herself hated cooking and was glad to leave it all to him.
Krister’s voice was tough and short as he said, “In that case you can start cooking your own rabbit food. The rest of us will continue to eat as we always have.”
Silence settled over the dinner table once again.
“TIME TO CHANGE your razor blade.”
“Did you really need a face lift?”
“Wow, that cat sure did a number on you.”
Witticisms rained down on Irene and her bandaged ear, but she was used to her colleagues’ bantering. She knew that this was a sign of everyone’s jitters right before the start of an investigation, especially one as complicated as this seemed to be. The jokes eased the tension everyone felt.
Six detectives, the superintendent, and the forensics technician, Svante Malm, were crowded around the conference table, Irene saw. The chief inspector appeared worn out and tired next to Fredrik Stridh, whose entire body pulsed with energy. Of course, Stridh was the youngest of them all, but that wasn’t the only explanation. Inwardly, Irene heaved a deep sigh. Energetic and alert officers were certainly good, but murder was not solved by youthful enthusiasm alone. Boring routines, inspections and repeated inspections, interrogations and even more interrogations were required. Mind-numbing work. And after all that, just maybe you’d manage to put the puzzle together.
Birgitta Moberg was the only other female detective in the group. Last year she and Fredrik Stridh had had a romantic fling, until Birgitta went to Australia for two months and Fredrik had to stay behind. He’d been grumpy and depressed for weeks before he got back to his normal self.
Birgitta was a beautiful woman. She had blond hair and glittering brown eyes. She seemed younger than her true age of thirty.
Detective Jonny Blom had joined the department a few years before Irene. He was married and had four children. His coarse jokes and sharp-tongued comments got on her nerves sometimes, but she had to give him credit for being an exceptionally good officer. He was, above all, a talented and keen interrogator.
Tommy Persson sat next to Irene. He was not just her closest colleague but also her best friend. The others on the team had been suspicious of their closeness at first, but now they were used to it. Irene and Tommy had gone to the police academy together and had been good friends since the day they met.
Finally Irene looked at the detective who’d been in their department the longest, Hans Borg, fifty-four years old. Hans was actually a few years younger than the superintendent, but in experience the superintendent was still wet behind the ears compared to Borg. Borg had even managed to put together his own personal safety net. He’d taken early retirement and then finagled a way back onto the job with both pension and wages.
